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“You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.”

-- Henry Kissinger

News and Opinion

This is a very interesting article, providing considerable historical background about the current situation of endless wars in the Middle East. Much material is from a new book by Syrian professor of English literature and adviser to Bashaar al-Assad Bouthaina Shaaban, which is the first Syrian account of Henry Kissinger's negotiations with Hafez al-Assad. Here's a taste:

Syrian Archives Add New Details to Henry Kissinger’s Disastrous Middle East Record

Kissinger came late to Mideast diplomacy. As Nixon’s national security adviser from 1969 to 1973, he obstructed negotiations to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Eyeing William Rogers’s job as Nixon’s secretary of state, he discouraged moving beyond the ceasefire that Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria had accepted under the Rogers Plan to end the “war of attrition” that was bankrupting Israel. The region was changing in September 1970, the month that King Hussein crushed the Palestine Liberation Organization in Jordan and Nasser died. His successor was his vice president, Anwar Sadat. Two months later, a bloodless coup put Syria’s minister of defense, Hafez al-Assad, in the top job. The door to diplomacy opened, but Kissinger slammed it shut.

Sadat approached Nixon and Kissinger through a variety of emissaries to offer peace for territory. Kissinger ignored him, believing the Israelis could defend the Sinai Peninsula from behind their “impregnable” Bar Lev Line on the east bank of the Suez Canal. Again and again, Sadat threatened war if the Americans failed to budge the Israelis. Kissinger believed Sadat was bluffing and rebuffed him. When Sadat expelled all of the Soviet Union’s 15,000 military advisers from Egypt in 1972, Kissinger refused to acknowledge the Egyptian’s strategic shift.

Despite warnings from King Hussein of Jordan and various intelligence agencies, the Syrian and Egyptian armies took Israel unawares when they attacked on October 6, 1973. The Egyptians reduced the Bar Lev sandbanks with water cannon, threw down pontoon bridges, and crossed into the Sinai. Syrian tanks and infantry poured into the occupied Golan Heights. Only American emergency supplies, the call-up of reservists, and a lighting run to the west side of the canal saved Israel’s gains of 1967.

Kissinger, who had replaced Rogers two weeks before the war, stepped in to clean up the mess for which he was largely responsible. He flew to the Mideast with a twofold purpose: to exclude the Soviets from peace negotiations and to protect Israel. Sadat threw himself into Kissinger’s arms, offering to go along with his diplomacy wherever it led. Assad was a tougher nut to crack, as much due to his country’s position as what Nasser called the “beating heart of Arabism” as to his innate stubbornness. ...

Kissinger’s first meeting with Assad on December 15, 1973, lasted six and a half hours. Assad astounded his guest, the first U.S. secretary of state in his capital since 1953, by agreeing to exclude his Soviet patrons from the discussions on the understanding that the U.S. alone could influence Israel. Kissinger surprised Assad with the claim that his major obstacle emanated from those who control “the financial capital and means of communications” in the U.S., not so subtle code for the Zionist lobby that had yet to achieve the influence it would wield in later years. The Syrian transcripts contain Kissinger’s numerous disparaging remarks about the lobby, but, Shaaban writes, “The U.S. record makes no mention of him citing ‘financial capital’ or ‘means of communication.’”

Russia warns US-led coalition over downing of Syrian jet

Russia’s defence ministry has said it will treat any plane from the US-led coalition flying west of the Euphrates river in Syria as a potential target, after the US military shot down a Syrian air force jet on Sunday.

The ministry also said it was suspending a safety agreement with Washington designed to prevent collisions and dangerous incidents in Syrian airspace.

According to the Pentagon the Syrian jet in question had dropped bombs near US partner forces involved in the fight to wrest Raqqa from Islamic State (Isis) control. It was the first such US attack on a Syrian air force plane since Syria’s civil war began six years ago. ...

The growing risk of a direct confrontation between the US and Russia follows a decision by Donald Trump to grant his military chiefs untrammelled control of US military strategy in Syria.

Syria: Why the sudden escalation after US shoots down a Syrian aircraft?

‘The war after Isis’: has Trump opened the door to conflict with Iran?

US forces have opened fire on Iranian-backed forces in Syria three times in the past month, amid mounting tensions that observers and former officials worry could easily turn into an unplanned, spiralling conflict. ...

The string of incidents is just one illustration of how the different agendas being pursued by outside powers in Syria are increasingly on a collision course. On Monday, Russian forces threatened to shoot down aircraft from the US-led coalition if they strayed west of the Euphrates river in northern Syria, after a US plane shot down a Syrian regime bomber on Sunday.

The background for all these clashes is similar. As Isis is driven from its strongholds, the competition to control the territory it vacates is heating up. In the eastern Syrian desert, that has meant Iranian and US proxies, and potentially Iranian and US forces, are facing off with one another. It is the latest US-Iran flashpoint, amid tensions in Yemen, where Washington and Iran back opposing forces in a two-year war, and the Gulf around the Strait of Hormuz. ...

Trump has portrayed Iranian influence as a global threat on a par with Isis and al-Qaida. When Tehran suffered a terrorism attack on 7 June, the US president implied that the Iranian government was ultimately to blame. “We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote,” he said in a White House statement.

Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council, this month published a book, Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy. “By going to Saudi Arabia and declaring there was going to be an all-out isolation of Iran,” he said “… not only did Trump close the window for an all-inclusive dialogue, but he also opened up a window for a potential war with Iran.

Their Plan Becomes Clear: US Bombs Pro-Government Forces In Syria Yet Again#NoWarWithSyria #RegimeChange #Syriahttps://t.co/DpnZj14Wvr

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) June 7, 2017

US Intervention in Syria at Crossroads

The U.S. has stumbled into a trap in the Syrian desert town of Al-Tanf, and the big question now is whether it will stay, leave, or try to save face by putting on a show of force. Given the crisis mentality in Washington these days, the answer is likely the last. If so, the effect will be to take a bad situation and make it much, much worse. Al-Tanf is strategically important because it straddles an east-west international highway as it branches off to the north, crossing into southern Syria and continuing on to Damascus and Beirut. Since the highway serves as a supply line linking Shi‘ite population centers in Iran and Iraq with those in western Syria and southern Lebanon, the U.S. thought that by severing the supply line at Al-Tanf, located just a few miles north of the Iraqi and Jordanian borders, it could check a bid by Syria’s ally Iran to open up a corridor to the Mediterranean, strengthening the so-called “Shi‘ite crescent.”

But U.S. ambitions did not stop at dashing Iran’s strategic dreams in its regional Shi’ite-Sunni rivalry with Saudi Arabia. Beyond cutting off the road’s northern branch, the U.S. floated plans to convert the southern route into a modern U.S.-style toll road complete with service stations, rest stops, and cafés. The roadway would then be under the control of a military-linked security firm, the Reston, Virginia-based Constellis, which happens to be the owner of Academi, formerly known as Blackwater, whose heavily armed security guards were convicted of massacring 17 civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad, in 2007. So, instead of a supply route linking far-flung Shi‘ite population centers, the upshot would be a U.S.-controlled highway connecting Sunni-dominated Anbar Province in western Iraq with Sunni-majority Jordan – a neat trick if the U.S. could pull it off. In the interim, the United States, which does not have permission from the Syrian government to have military forces inside Syria, sought to expand the U.S. desert garrison in Al-Tanf by unilaterally declaring a “de-confliction zone” extending 34 miles in every direction and defending it by force. ....

But then the Syrian army did the unexpected. Racing down from the north, it swept across more than a hundred miles of desert to reach the Iraqi border between Al-Tanf and the Euphrates for the first time since 2015. By linking up with Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Units on the Iraqi side, the effect was to cut off U.S. forces from the Euphrates. The outcome was ironic because the U.S. is fighting alongside the Popular Mobilization Units against ISIS in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, yet the PMU forces were now coordinating with Damascus to bottle up the U.S. in southern Syria. ... So, will the U.S. do something drastic to break out of its encirclement in Al-Tanf, as foolhardy as that escalation might be? Knowing Trump and his desperation to change the subject from the Russia investigation, the answer may well be yes.

Egyptian Writer: Saudi Arabia Bankrolling Authoritarian Regimes Across the Arab World

Joe Manchin Was One of Five Democrats Who Saved Saudi Arms Sales. His Primary Opponent Is Furious.

A Senate resolution disapproving of a portion of arms sales to Saudi Arabia — which has been waging a long, bloody war in Yemen that has sparked multiple humanitarian crises — narrowly failed along a 47-53 vote on Tuesday. Five Democrats voted against the measure, ensuring that it did not pass.

One of those Democrats was Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who is facing a challenge from environmental activist Paula Jean Swearengin in next year’s primary. In an interview with The Intercept, Swearengin reacted harshly to Manchin’s vote in favor of the arms sale — which provides equipment necessary to conduct airstrikes in Yemen — and even suggested the conservative West Virginia Democrat is a Trump ally. ...

She also linked the vote to Manchin’s voting record on domestic matters, saying that both are evidence that Manchin doesn’t respect human rights. “He’s showing us he doesn’t value human life, in Appalachia, in America, or other countries,” she said. “People are dying in the streets and starving in Yemen. How does he sleep at night? West Virginians are tired of dying and starving as a result of his poor leadership, too.”

America will regret helping Saudi Arabia bomb Yemen

“USA Kills Yemeni People”, screams graffiti plastered on walls in Yemen’s capital Sana’a. The Yemeni people who have been on the receiving end of US bombs dropped by Saudi pilots know all too well that the United States is complicit in their suffering. The intense anti-US sentiment in Yemen should be a wake-up call for Americans: if you don’t care about the millions of suffering Yemenis, you might think about the future blowback.

Two US Senators, the Republican Rand Paul and the Democrat Chris Murphy, understand full well the implications and have been trying to halt the weapons sales. “The United States has no business supporting a war that has only served to embolden our terrorist enemies, exacerbate a humanitarian crisis, and incite fear and anger among the Yemeni people toward the United States. This will come back to haunt us,” warned Murphy. ...

Paul, an anti-interventionist Republican pushing the resolution, railed against the senators who were more concerned about the jobs the weapons manufacturers could generate than the lives of Yemeni children. “I am embarrassed that people are talking about making a buck while 17 million people are threatened with famine,” he said. He didn’t mention that many of the senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, have taken tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the same corporations benefitting from the sales.

The United Nations Security Council is now making another attempt to address the conflict, calling on all parties to allow unhindered access to humanitarian supplies, to keep all ports functioning (especially the critical port of Hudaidah, which the Saudis have threatened to take from Houthi control), and to make a good-faith attempt to find a political solution. ... People in the region understand that until there is a serious US interest in a political solution, it won’t happen. Even if Trump is only interested in “putting America first”, he would do well to stop being involved in dropping bombs on Yemenis and instead use his “art of the deal” to join with the United Nations in ending this catastrophic conflict.

Turkish troops take part in joint military exercises in Qatar

Turkish troops have arrived in Qatar to take part in joint training exercises, the Qatari defence ministry has said, as a diplomatic crisis in the Gulf enters its third week.

The first drills took place on Sunday at the Tariq bin Ziyad military base in Doha, the ministry said in a statement.

Qatar has been subject to an embargo led by Saudi Arabia since 5 June, when Riyadh and its allies including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties over accusations that Qatar supports extremism. Qatar says those allegations are an attempt to compromise the independence of its foreign policy.

Turkey, one of Qatar’s strongest allies, has offered diplomatic support and flown in fresh dairy produce to get around the blockade.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been outspoken in his support for the Qatari cause, condemning the Saudi-led blockade as “almost like a death sentence” for Qatar. “Qatar is not the one who supports terrorism, quite the opposite,” he said last week. “Along with Turkey, it is the country with the most resolute stance against Isis which has caused grave damage to our region.”

One person forced to flee their home every three seconds by war and violence

The number of people forced to flee their homes by war and persecution has risen to record levels for the third year running, with 65.6 million people displaced around the world – more than the population of Britain.

The latest annual global trends study from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reports that one person was forced to leave their home every three seconds in 2016. The number of people displaced last year was 300,000 higher than in 2015.

According to the report, refugee numbers were the highest ever in 2016, at 22.5 million, with the majority of people coming from Syria, Afghanistan and South Sudan.

Half of all refugees were children.

A further 2.8 million people sought asylum. Germany, which received 722,400 asylum claims, was the largest recipient of new applications, followed by the US, Italy and Turkey. At least 75,000 asylum claims were received from an unaccompanied child.

The vast majority of displaced people, 40.3 million, left their home but did not cross the border of their country. Syria, Iraq and Colombia – which has endured decades of conflict – had the largest number of internally displaced people.

Holy shit! We have finally found a war that the US military does not want!

Mad Dog Mattis on North Korea: "It would be a war that fundamentally we don't want."

Asked on Thursday by Rep. Tim Ryan of the House Appropriations Committee to explain why the US doesn't just go to war to stop North Korea from developing the capability to hit the US, Secretary of Defense James Mattis painted a grim scenario.

"I would suggest that we will win," Mattis said. "It will be a war more serious in terms of human suffering than anything we've seen since 1953. ...

"It would be a war that fundamentally we don't want," Mattis said, but "we would win at great cost." Mattis explained that because the threat from North Korea loomed so large and a military confrontation would destroy so much, he, President Donald Trump, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had all made a peaceful solution a top priority.

"Philando Can Be Any of Us": Black Lives Matter Protests Acquittal of Officer in Minnesota Killing

Protests Erupt After Officer Cleared in Fatal Shooting of Philando Castile

Thousands of protesters hit the streets of St. Paul, Minn. Friday night after a jury cleared Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile.

After a peaceful march of roughly 2,000 people near the state capitol, with some carrying signs reading "Justice not served for Philando," several hundred people then headed to Interstate 94 where they blocked traffic and faced off with law enforcement. The Minnesota State Patrol states that 18 people were arrested for failing to comply with the dispersal order.

The Twin Cities Pioneer Press adds: "At 1:30 a.m. Saturday, a few dozen protesters had gathered in front of the Governor's Residence, the site of a nearly three-week encampment after Castile's death last summer."

As CNN writes, "The protests were expected." ...

Castile's mother, Valerie, for her part, said following the court decision: "People have died for us to have these rights and now we're devolving. We're going back down to 1969. Damn. What is it going to take? I'm mad as hell right now, yes, I am," she said.

Protests in the wake of the shooting put another spotlight on the systemic violence faced by black men and women at the hands of police, and watchdog and human rights groups reacted to the verdict by urging an overhaul to police standards for the use of lethal force.

Civil Rights Lawyer: Philando Castile's Skin Color Ended Up Being a Death Sentence

Trump Embraces GOP Tax-Cut Orthodoxy

President Trump earned headlines — and worldwide condemnation — for his announcement June 1 that he was pulling the United States from the Paris climate accord, an agreement signed by 195 nations to fight runaway global warming. Just a week later, however, Trump attracted almost no attention when he rejected another important Paris accord — this one to fight international tax avoidance by multinational corporations.

The landmark agreement, signed by more than 70 countries, including members of the European Union, India and China, sets certain minimum standards for tax treaties. In particular, it curbs the abusive practices of companies that manipulate the flow of their income between subsidiaries to take advantage of low tax rates in jurisdictions like Luxembourg, where secret tax rulings have helped hundreds of multinational firms drastically reduce their payments. One such firm was Amazon, which candidate Donald Trump accused of “getting away with murder tax-wise,” before he abandoned his populist pretenses. This March, a U.S. tax court judge upheld as legal a $1.5 billion tax dodge by the online retailer, which developed an initiative called Project Goldcrest to shift billions of dollars of profits into Luxembourg. ...

Tax avoidance by multinational firms costs the United States Treasury roughly $190 billion a year, according to new estimates published by the World Institute for Development Economics Research. Rates of corporate tax avoidance are soaring. A 2014 study by Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the London School of Economics, estimated that a fifth of all U.S. corporate profits are now booked in offshore tax havens. That represented “a tenfold increase since the 1980s,” Zucman observed. “Over the last 15 years, the effective corporate tax rate of US companies has declined from 30 to 20 percent, and about two-thirds of this decline can be attributed to increased profit-shifting to low-tax jurisdictions.” Zucman also estimated—as a lower bound—that wealthy U.S. households had parked about $1.2 trillion in cash, stocks, and bonds in foreign tax havens. Counting art, jewelry, gold, real estate and other real assets, would almost certainly multiply that number, he added. ...

A reputable 2011 study of America’s “underground economy” estimated that nearly a fifth of reportable income was not, in fact, disclosed to the IRS. The loss to the Treasury from such cheating amounts to a staggering $500 billion annually, equal to all non-military discretionary federal spending combined. Instead of combating such abuses, President Trump and Congressional Republicans are doing everything in their power to cut tax rates on the rich and undercut enforcement of existing tax laws.

Venezuela's Opposition Receives Solid Support from International Media

The History Channel Is Finally Telling the Stunning Secret Story of the War on Drugs

[S]tarting Sunday night and running through Wednesday the History Channel is showing a new four-part series called “America’s War on Drugs.” Not only is it an important contribution to recent American history, it’s also the first time U.S. television has ever told the core truth about one of the most important issues of the past fifty years.

That core truth is: The war on drugs has always been a pointless sham. For decades the federal government has engaged in a shifting series of alliances of convenience with some of the world’s largest drug cartels. So while the U.S. incarceration rate has quintupled since President Richard Nixon first declared the war on drugs in 1971, top narcotics dealers have simultaneously enjoyed protection at the highest levels of power in America.

On the one hand, this shouldn’t be surprising. The voluminous documentation of this fact in dozens of books has long been available to anyone with curiosity and a library card. Yet somehow, despite the fact the U.S. has no formal system of censorship, this monumental scandal has never before been presented in a comprehensive way in the medium where most Americans get their information: TV.

Papering Over Poverty

Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow contradicts president on obstruction investigation

A member of Donald Trump’s legal team has denied the president’s own assertion that he is under investigation for obstruction of justice.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, appeared across the major political talk shows on Sunday. Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, he said: “The fact of the matter is the president has not been and is not under investigation.”

On NBC’s Meet the Press, he said: “He’s not afraid of the investigation – there is no investigation. There is not an investigation of the president of the United States, period.”

Sekulow’s comments directly contradicted Trump’s own tweet this week, in which he appeared to refer to deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein when he wrote: “I’m being investigated for firing the FBI director by the man who told me to fire the FBI director. Witch hunt!”

'Historic Opportunity': Supreme Court to Hear Partisan Gerrymandering Case

In a move that has the potential to "set a landmark precedent," the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday announced it will hear a Wisconsin gerrymandering case alleging the Republican-controlled legislature drew congressional disticts in a way that illegally discriminates against Democratic candidates and voters.

The plaintiffs in the case—a dozen Wisconsin residents—argue "Republican legislative leaders authorized a secretive and exclusionary mapmaking process aimed at securing for their party a large advantage that would persist no matter what happened in future elections." ...

Currently, however, there are several cases—in Pennsylvania and Maryland, for instance—in which partisan redistricting is the center of attention.

Given the impact gerrymandering has had on recent elections, the Wisconsin case is being hailed as potentially "revolutionary," one that could have "massive implications for redistricting and political power in America." ...

Last November, a panel of federal judges ruled 2-1 that Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 designed the congressional map to "make it more difficult for Democrats, compared to Republicans, to translate their votes into seats." Given the Supreme Court's decision to take on the case, the judges' ruling could reverberate nationally. "Both parties draw congressional and legislative districts to their own advantage," the Washington Post's Robert Barnes notes. "But Republicans have more to lose because they control so many more state legislatures."

Mozambique: 6,000 animals to rewild park is part-funded by trophy hunting

Call it Noah’s Ark on lorries. Dozens of trucks rolled over the Zimbabwe savanna carrying elephants, giraffe, African buffalo, zebras, and numerous other large iconic mammals. Driving more than 600km of dusty roadway, the trucks will deliver their wild loads to a new home: Zinave national park in Mozambique. The animals are a donation from Mozambique’s Sango Wildlife Conservancy – a gift that the owner, Wilfried Pabst, says would not be possible without funds from controversial trophy hunting.

“In remote places and countries with a weak tourism industry and a high unemployment rate, it is very difficult – or almost impossible – to run a conservancy like Sango without income from sustainable utilisation,” Pabst said. “Sustainable utilisation” means the use of wildlife for hunting or trophy hunting. Pabst, who purchased Sango in 1993 and opened its doors 10 years later, says that trophy hunting provides approximately 60% of the revenue required to keep Sango running every year. Another 30% comes out of the German businessman’s own pockets.

While Sango does welcome non-hunting tourists, Pabst says it is not possible to attract enough in this remote area to equal the revenue made by trophy hunters willing to travel to pay tens of thousands of dollars to shoot iconic megafauna, including Nile crocodiles, elephants and lions.

Over the next six years, Pabst will donate 6,000 large mammals from Sango to Zinave as part of the Peace Park Foundation’s programme to rewild a vast tract of land in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier conservation area (TFCA). Mozambique’s 15-year-long civil war left its once world-renowned parks almost empty of any animal large enough to shoot and eat, but numerous efforts today are working to bring back animals to Mozambique, often transporting them from either neighboring South Africa or Zimbabwe.

But, Masha Kalinina, a trade policy specialist with the Humane Society International, said the plan to transport thousands of animals across Zimbabwe to Mozambique was “misguided” and “potentially deadly” for individual animals. Indeed, such transports are not without risk: an elephant died last year en route to Zinave from South Africa. “Mozambique continues to have one of the highest rates of poaching in southern Africa,” she said. Mozambique lost nearly half of its elephants to poachers in five years. “Now both South Africa and Zimbabwe are transporting their own animals to this park just so that they may die at the hands of either trophy hunters or poachers. Is that what we are calling conservation?” Kalinina asked.

New Teflon Toxin Found in North Carolina Drinking Water

A persistent and toxic industrial chemical known as GenX has been detected in the drinking water in Wilmington, North Carolina, and in surface waters in Ohio and West Virginia.

DuPont introduced GenX in 2009 to replace PFOA, a compound it used to manufacture Teflon and coatings for stain-resistant carpeting, waterproof clothing, and many other consumer products. PFOA, also known as C8, was phased out after DuPont was hit with a class-action suit over health and environmental concerns. Yet as The Intercept reported last year, GenX is associated with some of the same health problems as PFOA, including cancer and reproductive issues.

Levels of GenX in the drinking water of one North Carolina water utility, the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, averaged 631 ppt (parts per trillion), according to a study published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters in 2016. Although researchers didn’t test the water of two other drinking water providers that also draw water from that area of the Cape Fear River, the entire watershed downstream of the Chemours discharge, which is a source of drinking water for some 250,000 people, is likely to be contaminated, according to Detlef Knappe, one of the authors of the study.

Research presented at a conference this week at Northeastern University detailed the presence of GenX in water in North Carolina and Ohio. In both cases, the chemical was found in water near plants that were owned by DuPont and since 2015 have been operated by DuPont’s spinoff company, Chemours. Both GenX and PFOA belong to a larger group of chemicals known as PFAS, which are structurally similar and believed to persist indefinitely in nature.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

The Syrian Nightmare: No End in Sight

US Continues To Attack Syria In “Self Defense” To Provoke Assad Retaliation

Brad Pitt’s “War Machine” Offers an Absurd and Scathing Critique of America’s Delusional Generals

The Fallacies of the ‘Russia-Truthers’

Conservative Media Outlets Falsely Smeared Philando Castile As A Criminal After His Death

Trump Officials Overseeing Amazon-Whole Foods Merger May Face Conflicts of Interest

Blaming Bernie Sanders for a Shooting

Arizona Aid Group Questions Border Patrol Surveillance Following a Raid on Its Camp

Trump Is Appointing Racist Fake-News Purveyors to the Federal Bench

After the London Inferno, a Question For Laissez-faire Zealots: Is a Human Life Worth No More Than $100?

A Little Night Music

Skip James - Crow Jane

Skip James - Devil Got My Woman

Skip James - Catfish Blues

Skip James - I'm So Glad

Skip James - Illinois Blues

Skip James - Drunken Spree

Skip James - Cherry Ball Blues

Skip James - My Last Boogie